Hello and welcome to Pupillary Pathways!
My journey to becoming an optometrist was a very long and winding road with many different obstacles, routes, and detours that I encountered along the way. Some days it seemed as though I was cruising along the freeway at 70 miles per hour on a clear, sunny day, while at other times, I felt as though I was on a dark, winding, two lane highway in an unfamiliar area with no end in sight. As an optometry student you will find that everyone has their own unique pathways that they took in order to get where they are today.
pupil (noun)
- the expanding and contracting opening in the iris of the eye, through which light passes through to the retina
- a person who is learning under the close supervision of a teacher, professor, tutor, or the like; a student
As for me, I wasn’t one of those people who always knew that they wanted to become an optometrist since they were a kid, but I did know from a young age that I wanted to pursue a career in the healthcare field. It wasn’t until college that optometry really began to spark my interest. I was intrigued by all the measurements of the different aspects of the visual system, and by the amount of knowledge regarding the status of one’s general health that could be ascertained through a comprehensive eye examination.
It was also during my first year of college that I received my very first pair of glasses and realized the details around me that I had been missing my entire life. That inspired me to begin working for a large clinic on campus, and from then on I began to fall in love with the profession. Even though your road to the decision of becoming an optometrist may be different, the destination is the same. We are all in this for similar reasons and the ability to help patients with the most precious of their senses is extremely stimulating and rewarding.
Once you have decided to take the pathway to becoming an optometrist, optometry school will again present you with many different obstacles throughout your four years of study that you will need to navigate through. This includes sacrificing social events in order to study for midterms and finals, late nights at school practicing procedures for clinical skills exams, frustrating days in clinic with difficult patients, choosing clinic rotations, managing the anxiety that comes with trying to master all parts of NBEO, deciding on residency programs, and eventually determining where you’d like to settle down and practice.
Here at Pupillary Pathways, our goal is to help guide you, as an optometry student, through the bumps in the road that you will inevitably encounter; to help you find a detour off of the winding two-lane highway, and get you back to cruising on the freeway!
So please join us for a wide variety of study tips, serious discussions, pertinent case-studies, and light-hearted stories, all in the name of guiding you through the different pathways to successfully conquer the rigorous training program that is optometry school.
Welcome! -Dr. Dexter